Motivation for building a Mobile based Business
Why did I decide I needed to become a mobile based business? Well it started with my first Art Car, Golden Girl, she was a fortunate experimentation into travel and making and selling art on the road. From my first patchworked cotton garments at colorful music festivals, to dance performances with my amiga Margarita; it was the beginning of a golden adventure.
AUN GRL, Golden Girl, Chica Dorada, my little art car is finally ready to retire. I bought her in 1999. My first car… a 1992 VW Golf GL (Good Luck), she got more miles and good times then most cars could dream of…
Her story began in Baltimore, MD with a long road trip that started in 2001… My friend Margarita had jumped in the car with me as we were suppose to travel back North from my second visit to Asheville in October 2001. We somehow ended up traveling South for several hours before we realized we were in Columbia, SC! We fell out of the car in laughter pains, and realized we were destined for the road trip of a lifetime. So we proceeded to get on the road with Golden Girl, GG! We became golden travel sisters; we were the Golden Girlzs, a performance duo with a pension to dance, perform and travel in our glitzed out Gohemian wheelz.
We hit Savannah GA, found the hostel in the forest, then bounced to Citra outside of Gainsville, FL and stayed in a Tangerine Orchard. After juicing for a while we sauntered across hot springs down the coastline to New Orleans, all the while performing costumed, improv dance routines we coreographed. We bounced over to Austin, TX to the Rhizome Collective, got GG outfitted with a propeller, then took the long road to El Paso. There we picked up Margarita’s boyfriend Marko and a bonus hitchhiker named Rafi. The four of us humans and my travel companion Soulstice, a scrappy mid sized perfection on four legs, stretched out in my two door art car with a burrito of camping gear on top.
We crossed the border and drove, days and nights, just sleeping in the art car all five of us, oh however did we do that? Meanwhile, I was all the time making art from miniature suitcase studios that traveled with us. The sketchbooks from that period are sand crusted , treasure troves of magical Mexican adventures. We lived out of GG for five months, with the occasional hotel, but primarily palapa shelters and hammocks that gave us shade and stretched out snoozes as we traveled the coastal perimeter of Mexico. We occasionally dipped in to Mexico City D.F. , Oaxaca, Palenque, San Cristobal, etc. We had some historic adventures and GG got back to her roots, having been “hecho en Mexico”; she transformed into Chica Dorada.
The girl of gold, was a car, but it also became me. I became so interconnected with my car that it seemed we were bewitched by karma. One year later… I had married, moved to Mexico and opened a Vegetarian Restaurant, Pacha Mama, in Mazunte a small fisherman’s village down from Puerto Angel and Zipolete; where I had met my husband the year before with my GG crew. On Noche Buena, the eve before Christmas I had prepared an Indian feast of epic proportions for our restaurant. I asked my husband to go grab some cauliflower as it had been overlooked. He returned disheartened with cauliflower and no GG. She had rolled down an embankment and flipped over landing on her hood in a river bed. She looked dead. I was hysterical with loss, being a stranger in a strange land with my lifeline to America out of commission. We closed the restaurant that night, and went down to the beach. I was immediately bitten by a scorpion on the temple and went into anaphylactic shock. Fortune would have it that both Golden Girls made it through that first Noche Buena.
Countless adventures and stories, enough for a book, happened in that car. Are you interested in hearing more about The Golden Girls Adventures? I would love to publish a book about this wild art car and her woman. So why why is she ready to retire? Truth is I have outgrown her reckless adventures, and she has done her job. She has earned her retirement. Thirteen years later, I love Asheville, and she got me here by way of a long and windy glittery road. I love you Golden Girl. T’amo Chica Dorada. Right Aun Grl! Now my little golden Girl Cantona and I are ready to hit the road again to sell ARTeries by Stina, and share our golden adventures in new places. We are preparing to build a mobile boutique to create a shoppe that will match the amazing stories of golden girls with amazing fashionable scores! Look for our new Golden Fashion Truck on the road in 2015!